SciFi bought by Universal

I saw that in the paper this morning. I admit my heart did a little lurch at the thought of an endless stream of commercial Star Trek-like knockoffs (this would make a good Scifi Angst subject). However, until they disappoint me once again, I will choose to take the positive view: Universal means a bigger budget, and maybe… just maybe… they’ll slip some innovative, envelope-pushing programming in among the dreck.

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Originally posted by DalekTek790:
Now, Universal has brought us quite a few quality sci-fi movies in the last few years. [i]Jurassic Park, Species, The Relic, Mimic, The Island of Dr. Moreau, and Virus[/i], to name a few.

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I’ll give you [i]Jurassic Park[/i] and [i]Mimic[/i] as being *passable* sci-fi flicks, though I’d argue that neither is, strictly speaking, sci-fi. One is an action movie with science fiction overtones and one is a monster movie with sci-fi overtones. The science in both cases exists only to initiate the story and is practically ignored for the rest of the film. The others you mentioned are, for the most part, complete crap. [i]The Island of Dr. Moreau[/i], in particular, is an insult to both H.G. Wells and to moviegoers everywhere. It’s a feature-length indulgence of 2 massive egos (Brando and Kilmer) at the expense of coherent storytelling, character development, and competent filmmaking in general. I’ve rarely been tempted to walk out of a film, and will stick it out no matter how dire it gets. This film stretched my endurance almost as much as [i]Cool World[/i] or the ’98 [i]Godzilla[/i], and that’s saying a *lot*.

–Aleck

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Originally posted by Flamegrape:
I saw [i]Isle Dr. Moreau[/i] in the theater. It was “okay”. But I really liked Fairuza Balk as the kitty-kat girl. I like anything she does.

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Ditto here on the Fairuza Balk tip. I thought she was wasted (as was the “cat” makeup that was only visible for a brief flash), but I like her lots in general. Now, [i]Almost Famous[/i], *that’s* a good Balkan role. She co-owns an occult book and supply store in LA, BTW. Used to stop in all the time, but never caught her there. Good store, though.

quote[quote]I was terribly disappointed in [i]Cool World[/i]. Didn’t Ralph Bakshi (the animator of that movie) retire after that?[/quote]

Oh, if he’d only retired *before* it. It had a decent premise, and when I first heard about it, I thought that Bakshi was the perfect guy to do a subversive adult take-off on the [i]Roger Rabbit[/i] thing. I mean, the guy’s made some of the more twisted and outrageous animated features ever. But [i]Cool World[/i] was put together like they had to rush a project out on [i]Roger Rabbit[/i]’s heels, and forgot to write a script. Things just happen for no good reason and with no explanation, the compositing of live-action and animated footage is *horrid* (he did it better in [i]Coonskin[/i], aka [i]Street Fight[/i])…oh, it just sucks.
He did do a couple more projects after that though. He did a live-action remake of [i]The Cool and the Crazy[/i] for Cinemax, I believe, and an adult animated anthology series that I never saw called [i]Spicy City.[/i]

–Aleck

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Originally posted by LexxLurker:
One thing we can be sure of is SciFi will still be airing that Firescape crap night after night. 😛

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Praise be!!!!! Now that might make it all worth while. Let see what kind of ratings FarsceScape gets now without dozens of promo’s and most favored time slot treatment.

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Originally posted by LexxLurker:
The worst aspect will be the lack of outlets for cult sci-fi. The *good* stuff. Sure Sci-Fi airs a lot of crap but every weekday they air an all day marathon of (insert cult show here) like Earth2, Good vs Evil, Alien Nation, Star Trek, Dark Shadows, etc..etc.. they literally have about 50 series they rotate

I know Ive had to set my TiVo more than once for a good daylong marathon while at work. But I fear that will all end with Universal now having their own outlet in Television.

The good news is they might get their head screwed on right. Their decision to bait and switch with EFC and Now and Again had viewers and sponsers alike really ****ed. Even their PR contact was at a loss for words when two weeks in a row he had to lie for his bosses. And after a sponser backed out they went and changed their excuse again.

One thing we can be sure of is SciFi will still be airing that Firescape crap night after night. 😛

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I agree about the scifi world midday marathons. I love a lot of the shows that they have on their. [i]Earth 2, Alien Nation, Space: Above and Beyond[/i], and [i] Sea Quest[/i] (first two seasons). But they never show Seaquest anymore. Unfortunatly they don’t always show good stuff duing that time slot. Some of those shows, cough [i]Black Scorpion[/i] cough, are hardly even worthy of me pressing the power button on my remote to turn the tv on.
But you are right about them cancelling scifi world, in another thread I mentioned that they’re discontinuing it, starting in the new year. As a mater of fact I think there’s only a few more of them left, because of holiday programming.

As for EFC, that was a disaster waiting to happen. They gave it their death slot, nothing succeds there, and tried to advertise the hell out of it. But now since they spent too much money on it, they want to try to get some of it back, so they’re moving B5 to another time slot (bad) and putting EFC in its place.

As for [i]Farscape[/i], praise be, your wrong on that one! No showing of Farscape during January, and possibly all the way to April! Of course they’ll throw in a chain reaction somewhere in there, just to keep people interested.

Starting in January, they’ll be rerunning First Wave in its place. Which brings me to another point. They’ve rerunned two pirme shows, why not another? After the holidays I will be posting/proposing something about this.